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Mirrors of Orion: Star Knowledge of the Ancient World – An Introduction

Egypt is the image of the heavens, and the whole Cosmos dwells here, in this its sanctuary— but the gods will desert the earth and return to heaven abandoning this land that was once the home of spirituality .

From the 2nd and 3rd century AD, Hermetica, a dire prophecy that ultimately befell the land of the pharaohs still haunts us today. Alas, we are in an even worse state, when we are forced to ask “What gods?” We mourn some pop icon, some Elvis or Michael Jackson, while texting and tweeting around the planet at lightning speed, hell-bent on oblivion. Never have we known so much about the history of human civilization yet continue to perpetrate barbaric acts of violence and warfare that threaten our very existence and that of our entire planet. To put it simply, we are in trouble.

Conversely, a new paradigm has arisen in which the esoteric wisdom of the past is being revitalized, reinterpreted, and reinstituted—including in the realm of the mystical dimensions of celestial knowledge. Engineer-turned-Egyptologist Robert Bauval is one current researcher involved in this renaissance.

“The ‘religion’ of the ancient Egyptian was a ‘magical religion’ or, as it has become more obvious in recent years, an ‘astral religion’. The belief was that the benevolent and nurturing influence of the stars could be drawn down into Egypt through a sacred science involving rituals and talismans (pyramids, statuary, etc.). This explains the building of the Giza pyramids as ‘stars’ to represent the region of the sky containing Orion, the latter deemed to be the stars most benevolent to mankind. It may sound ‘hocus pocus’ to us today, but I strongly suspect that the ancients could thus create ‘sacred cosmic landscapes’ in which high rituals were performed that affected the spiritual aspect of initiated men and women. These haunting lines from the Hermetic Texts strongly hint at this magical sacred religion grafted, quite literally, into the landscape and temples of Egypt: “Do you not know, Asclepius, that Egypt is made in the image of heaven? Or, to be more precise, that everything governed and moved in heaven came down to Egypt and was transferred there?’”

This quote is a perfect summary of the constellation correlation concept, which indicates a talismanic correspondence of celestial and terrestrial. Not simply a passive “star worship,” or astro-theology, it is instead an active sort of arcane harvesting of the divine emanations of various stellar entities—the quality of each depending upon the vibration of and deific resonance with the particular star.

Many of the rituals and ceremonies of ancient Egypt are believed to represent cosmic events. In ancient Egypt, a sacred bull symbolized the incarnation of Ptah. The golden bull calf represented the Sun as it travels through Heaven. Image source .

Author Willem H. Zitman also subscribes to this star correlation theory. “In Antiquity, geographers had cast a celestial network of stars over the Earth in order to create a terrestrial grid, which would serve to chart the world. They were obviously looking to relate regions or places to a certain celestial meridian, which in turn was linked with certain stars. To that end, they invented a matrix that possessed the characteristic of an alignment system, as depicted on the [Sumerian] Planisphere, which enabled them to classify the old world.”

My newly released book, "Mirrors of Orion", is a survey of the archaeo-astronomy of various cultures around the globe. How did ancient people conceptualize the heavens? What was their notion of the universe? How did their sacred ceremonies or ritual enactments bring them closer to the omnipotent or at least powerful celestial beings? What structures, temples, or standing stones did they erect to create models of the sky realm? By its very nature this book is extensive rather than intensive, allowing the reader to pursue further areas of special cultural interest. In essence, it is a primer for the concept of sky-ground mirrors—the terra firmament, so to speak. Well-known constellation correlations, such as the Orion-Giza schema, join newly discovered sidereal correspondences, such as those in Syria and Nigeria.

Ancient people comprehended the language of the stars much better than we do today, despite our Hubble Space Telescope and Very Large Array. If we can translate the encoded messages from the celestial dimension to understand what these time-traveling pinpoints of light are endeavoring to tell us, then we will realize the complexity and depths of our past knowledge of a truly living cosmos. We will ultimately find that spirit and matter are a single continuum extending far into our future—mirror reflecting mirror down the sacred portal that leads to Orion.

Gary A. David is an author, independent researcher, and archaeo-astronomer. For over twenty-five years he has studied the archaeological ruins and rock art of the American Southwest. His nonfiction books explore Hopi mythology, star knowledge, and rituals,... Read More

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